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Talk:The Natural History Project
Citation This is a fantastic article! I didn't know anything about this project; this is exactly what the wiki should be. I want to nominate this for a Quality nomination, but there's three more things I think it could use: *A citation for the info about Stout talking to Henson right before he died *Some info on the "Saurians and Sorcerors" trading cards, which I assume are the source of the images *A quote about the influence on Dinosaurs... I know that when Dinos premiered, there was a lot of talk in the media about how it was based on one of Henson's ideas. If we look at some early Dinosaurs press, we should be able to find a good quote about it. I'll work on the third item. Can somebody add the first two? -- Danny (talk) 17:58, 28 February 2007 (UTC) :Here's the full listing of what was on the cards. I'm not sure how to note it except as a source or a note at the end, since it wasn't a new project, just Stout repackaging a lot of his movie and concept art, a mix of released posters and abandoned projects, it seems, and with the title only covering the most recurring themes (since it alo includes American Graffiti); on the other hand, the fact that it seems to be the only commercial release of any art or anything associated with the project is notable. It would help to label the images too; outside of a couple of obvious ones, as a layman when it comes to dinosaurs, it's not immediately obvious which corresponds to what. Finally, on point three, right now, it reads like speculation and while worth noting, should be re-worded I think. I've dug into this in the past, and have found absolutely nothing to indicate a direct connection between the two projects, as far as Dinosaurs evolving from the former, save that they both involved dinosaurs (and come to that, so did Living with Dinosaurs). The quotes in No Strings Attached about Jim's involvement emphasize that his concept of Dinosaurs was that it would be a sitcom satire, which doesn't seem to jibe so much with what we know of Natural History. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 18:17, 28 February 2007 (UTC) ::We should use the cards as a footnote, because that's the source for some of the plot information. Scott uploaded the pictures, so he should be able to add that stuff. ::Here's what I have on the origin of Dinosaurs. I'm going to type everything in here: the quotes, references and all, so that they can be used in the Dinos article too, if we want. ::The New York Times, April 14 1991, "All in the Modern Stone Age Family" by Eve M. Kahn. "Jim Henson dreamed up the show's basic concept about three years ago. 'He wanted it to be a sitcom with a pretty standard structure, with the biggest differences being that it's a family of dinosaurs and their society has this strange toxic life style,' said Brian Henson. But until The Simpsons too off, said Alex Rockwell, a vice president of the Henson organization, 'people thought it was a crazy idea.'" ::TV Guide, April 27 1991, "Blast From the Past: Prime Time Hatches a New Brood of Dinosaurs" by Timothy Carlson. "As unlikely as a sitcom about a dinosaur family sounds, one thing the series has in its favor is its ingenious creator: the late Jim Henson, who died last year. The concept for the series was an idea that Henson began tossing around about four years ago, says Henson's son, Brian, who is co-executive producer of Dinosaurs." ::The New Yorker, Aug 16 1993, "Looking Out for Kermit" by Ron Powers. "Even as the merger negotiations were falling apart, the Hensons and Eisner reached an agreement whereby Disney would provide financial support for the TV series Dinosaurs, which Jim Henson had conceived of in the last months of his life." ::So that's three slightly different stories -- Henson came up with the show three years before his death, four years before his death, and in the last months of his life. Having read all of those, I always assumed that meant it was just publicity talk -- that Dinosaurs really had nothing to do with Jim, but Brian wanted everybody to think that it was Jim's idea, in the same way that a half dozen projects were sold as Gene Roddenberry's ideas for years after Roddenberry's death. ::Now that I've seen this article, though, it does seem like there could be a connection. Four years before Henson's death was 1986, which is when he was working on this dinosaur project, and the "last months of his life" thing might be a reference to Henson talking to Stout again. If anybody's interested, it might be worthwhile to ask Karen Falk at the Henson Archives about it. -- Danny (talk) 20:13, 28 February 2007 (UTC) I added a couple paragraphs about the Dinosaurs link here, and on the Dinosaurs page. It's a tricky bit of writing -- I don't want to say for sure what the connection is, becuase there's a lot of missing information. Did Henson ever intend to turn this into a family sitcom, or was that just PR talk to make the show seem more connected to Henson's work? So I've done the best I could with it. Can somebody else take a second look at these sections? -- Danny (talk) 17:33, 2 March 2007 (UTC) :::Regardless of how long before Jim Henson died that he came up with the idea for Dinosaurs, it is possible that he thought of the idea long before he talked about it to anybody. Jim Henson: The Works mentions something about him talking about ideas of dinosaurs living modern day human lives long before he pitched the idea. --Minor muppetz 20:24, 2 March 2007 (UTC) Images Are they by William Stout, or other production people? -- Zanimum 16:13, 2 March 2007 (UTC)